The Golden Land
an excerpt

Moth was growing concerned over the silence. How it grew louder with every step he took towards his family’s estate. This late in the morning, there should be children laughing, the smells and sounds of a hearty breakfast drifting on the wind. Moth sniffed the air and smelled only a sticky, faint stench, horribly familiar.
He smelled blood. Suddenly hurrying to the house, he tripped over the first body, hidden by tall shrubs just outside the courtyard. Startled, he turned over the figure, though he already knew who it was. His brother-in-law Gecko had been slain with a single, efficient thrust of katana. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Moth forced himself forward, to where his father, Dragonfly, lay in the courtyard, his robes and hair flowing like the portrait of a heavenly being. Beside the patriarch lay an unfamiliar figure in a bright red kimono, dark, wild hair everywhere. Moth did not recognize the man, nor he could find anything on his person to identify him.
Dread made each of his footfalls heavy now. Whoever did this had attacked quickly, perhaps distracting with the man who died at his father’s hand in the courtyard. The household had been overrun. They spared no life, not even the elderly woman in the kitchen. His mother Daffodil died brandishing a cast iron pan. At the entrance to he and Swan’s bedroom, he found his sister Butterfly and nephew Cicada. They’d made a noble stand for Swan. Judging by the blood and movement, it seemed both had managed to wound their assailants. Still, they’d fallen, and Moth’s hopes of any survivors quickly drained.
There was too much blood on the bed he’d shared with Swan. There she lay, tear-stained and swollen. He realized after a moment she must have recently born their son. Much of the blood was not from the wound on her throat. The attackers must have arrived just as the baby was born and they were beginning to clean up.
Training his eyes across the room, Moth quickly saw what had become of his son, his little warrior-to-be. He’d been ripped from his mother’s arms, naked and red, and thrown aside with tremendous brute force. The newborn hit the wall, splattered and snapped. The sheer rage that overcame him for a moment caused Moth to grasp for his katana, but there was no one here alive to answer for it. The bloody footprints of the three killers searching the house only brought more questions.
Moth discovered the mirror was gone quite accidentally. All of the storage spaces had been opened, cabinets left with doors swinging carelessly. He was searching for the last of his family, his niece. Had the murderers found her hiding in a small space? The girl was frail and had been recovering from illness; it wasn’t strange to think she might have hidden. While he examined each corner, fruitless and numb, he saw the ornate box holding the mirror had been removed, smashed on the floor nearby. The gold coins and other valuables stored inside were gone, but the mirror, with its strange, unreadable text, had been pulled from its inset.
Moth veins turned to ice water. His expression, one of grim concentration and examination, was frozen to his face. He wished then to frown, to knit his brow, but his face was as motionless as a mask. Why the mirror? Compared to other families and especially the daimyo, his family held extremely humble means, little more than land and a few antiques. They were, after all, only insects. His mother once told him the writing on the face of the mirror was a spell, but no one for generations had the slightest idea how to read it. Could these phantom attackers, now known to him as slaughters and thieves without the decency to bury the dead respectfully, be educated enough in the old languages to read it? That would make them monks of the highest degree from the farthest corners of the Golden Land. Moth found that hard to believe, but found no conclusion that satisfied him even a little.